Donald Trump's gift to America: Realizing we've never been a liberal democracy. By PAUL ROSENBERG

By Dilip -

NB: What America has been doing to the rest of the world for decades after the Second World War, it is now doing to itself. Four people are dead after a Trump-sponsored riot: see pictures. There's so much to say its difficult to begin. Those who imagine the USA to be the leader of 'the Free World', and a 'shining city on a hill', may reflect on a few examples of American intervention. In collaboration with Britains MI6, the CIA promoted the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. The US intervened in Vietnam from 1963 and 1975; and overthrew Chilean democracy in 1973. President Allende was assassinated in his residence; and beloved Chilean singer Victor Jara murdered by the military after his hands had been smashed. 

Rebecca Solnit - Call it what it was: a coup attempt 

The US intervened in Afghanistan before the USSR arrived; and collaborated with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in Bangladesh President Mujibur Rahman's assassination in 1975. This is a small sample of the USA's attitude toward democracy abroad when the policies of certain governments did not suit its strategic interests. Trump's most fervent Indian admirer can now advise him how best to instigate violence from the background. Or, for the time being, repent at leisure. DS

Donald Trump's gift to America: Realizing we've never been a liberal democracy

Is Trump a threat to liberal democracy, as elite voices tell us — or a reminder that we've never gotten there?    If every cloud has a silver lining, Donald Trump's destructiveness offers this one: He has forced us to a point of reckoning about America. If we think all this chaos is just about him, we've missed the whole point. On that point, there's wide agreement. Beyond that, however, there's considerable disagreement, if not confusion. The vast majority of elite discourse sees this in terms of a challenge to liberal democracy - a challenge that's been unfolding worldwide over the past decade or so, sometimes characterized as a "third wave of autocratization." 

There's a large body of knowledge and experience behind this point of view (see groups such as Varieties of Democracy for a global perspective, or Bright Lines Watch in the U.S.). But such an idealized view of American democracy has always been challenged by African Americans, for instance: See Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" or Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again.") Trump's election, in obvious response to Barack Obama's, has had the effect of pushing the longstanding Black critique of American democracy to the very center of our politics. …

https://www.salon.com/2021/01/02/donald-trumps-gift-to-america-realizing-weve-never-been-a-liberal-democracy/

Jonathan Freedland: Trump is destroying democracy in broad daylight // Chauncey DeVega: Vigilantes are preparing ‘to launch a coup’

Chauncey DeVega: Trump is mentally ill but our real sickness runs much deeper

Amulya Ganguli - End of India’s “Howdy, Modi” Bonhomie with the USA

America isn't breaking. It was already broken. By Andrew Gawthorpe // Why This Time Is Different. By Dahlia Lithwick

Mohammed Hanif: The rest of the world has had it with US presidents, Trump or otherwise

Victor Jara murder: ex-military officers sentenced in Chile for 1973 death

Conversation with Lawrence Lifschultz: The American reporter who investigated the assassination of Mujibur Rahman

Andrew Bacevich: High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Fading American Century

You're fired ! Americans taunt Trump with his own catchphrase

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ends truce by warning ‘incompetent’ Democratic party

George Monbiot: Ayn Rand - A Manifesto for Psychopaths

Tom McTague: The Decline of the American World

Donald Trump: Democracy’s mirror image? By Philip Manow / David A. Bell - Fascism or Caesarism?

Jonathan Freedland - Donald Trump's plot against democracy could break America apart

Debt: The first five thousand years. By DAVID GRAEBER

HARRY BLAIN: America’s Wars always Come Home

Jill Lepore  A History of America’s military spendingLucian Truscott: Trump wants to end the forever wars - except the one about oil and money

William Astore: The U.S. Military’s Lost Wars // Chris Hedges: The American Empire Will Collapse Within a Decade, Two at Most

Tom Dispatch - William Astore, From Deterrence to Doomsday? // C. Wright Mills on The Structure of Power in American Society (1958) // The Week the World Almost Ended by Nate Jones and J. Peter Scoblic

Angela Mitropoulos - Fascism, from Fordism to Trumpism // The hucksters of discontent

Steve Bannon Documentary, 'The Brink', Will Leave You Cold

Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Serial authoritarianism picks out targets and tires out challenges

A Final Warning by George Orwell\

The Disappearing Present: A talk on Ideology



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